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Market Basket to raise stakes with online orders

By Grant Welker, gwelker@lowellsun.com

Updated:
03/31/2014 08:23:59 AM EDT

The grocery chain that has no website now has its goods available for delivery through online orders.

Market Basket, a back-to-basics, low-profile company, has combined with the website Instacart, which uses a team of personal shoppers that stock up the groceries and deliver them to doorsteps across Boston and immediate suburbs.

Instacart, which operates in six of the largest cities nationwide, began working with Market Basket earlier this month. In Greater Boston, it also teams with Costco, Shaw's and Whole Foods, but the company doesn't talk about how the arrangement with grocers works.

"Usually, we don't talk about it, to be honest," said Nima Zahedi, the Boston operations manager for Instacart, which has about 60 shoppers in the area.

Market Basket, which is typically quiet about all of its operations, also didn't give details about its groceries being available for home delivery. Personal shoppers in general have become more common, however, said Dave McLean, the operations manager for Market Basket.

"We see more and more of that," he said.

At the same time Tewksbury-based Market Basket is expanding its services through technology, it could also be expanding north, thanks to the success of its first Maine store, in the Portland-area town of Biddeford.

The company would not announce plans for new stores until anything was definitive, he said.

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"That's something that's not discussed publicly, as are all of our potential locations."

The Biddeford store, which opened last August as one of the largest in the chain at 105,000 square feet, has done very well, according to the company, which was not specific about sales figures.

"Success at the store has been fantastic," McLean said.

A wave of expansion in Massachusetts may now be in doubt, though, with no definitive answers on proposed or stalled stores.

Stores are under construction or in the planning stages in Athol, Attleboro, Plymouth, Revere and Waltham, but all appear to have been affected by power troubles within the company.

The Revere store, at the Northgate Mall, was ready to open last September, according to the Revere Journal.

It has yet to open. The phone at the store rings without an answer or message, and a worker at the nearby Chelsea store said employees there had not been told the status of the store.

The Attleboro store has been finished for two months but remains closed, according to a report last week by The Sun-Chronicle of Attleboro. The company spent $7.6 million on the store and received a temporary occupancy permit Jan. 28, the newspaper reported.

McLean said he wasn't sure where things stood with the openings of those stores. A spokesman for Market Basket CEO Arthur T. Demoulas referred questions about the new stores to the board of directors.

A website for the Market Basket board of directors says the board has "asked management to open" the Attleboro store and "authorized payment to sign a lease" for a new store in Waltham to move ahead after constructed was halted for a time last year.

"However, as for other projects, there are issues that still need to be addressed and resolved by management prior to approval by the board," the website says. It was last updated Jan. 9, and a spokeswoman for the board says the information remains up-to-date.

Other new stores, in Athol and Littleton, remain under construction, with progress continuing, McLean said.

The Waltham site, called 1265 Main, includes Market Basket as a planned anchor. Market Basket is still featured in plans on the development's website. In Athol, Market Basket has been expected to anchor the 300,000 square-foot North Quabbin Commons mixed-use development.

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